In a manufacturing process for a semiconductor integrated circuit device, inspection is performed whether there is any pattern defect to be caused by unsatisfactory exposure or position misalignment and a detect to be caused by particles deposited on a wafer surface. The number of defects whose defect data can be stored is limited dependent upon a storage capacity of a defect inspection apparatus. When the number of defects exceeds this limit during defect detection, the defect detection process stops. As a result, defect data on defects over the whole surface of a wafer cannot be acquired.
A method is publicly known by which an upper limit value of the number of detected defects per chip on a wafer is set in advance. According to this method, when the number of detected defects reaches the upper limit value, inspection of the chip is discontinued, and the next chip is inspected. It is therefore possible to inspect all chips on a wafer.